The corona pandemic is also a hunger pandemic. Approximately three times as many people have died from hunger as from corona in 2020-2021. And world hunger will continue to increase sharply in 2022.
Many more people will die of hunger in 2022.
Globally, too little artificial fertilizer is currently available. The required crop yields worldwide are designed to use artificial fertilizers. As things stand, next year’s crop yields are expected to be 30-40% lower.
This article is not about whether conventional or organic farming makes more sense. Nor is it about why the quantities of artificial fertilizers are decreasing worldwide and why prices are exploding.
The fact is that global crop yields are expected to fall by around one-third next year.
What does that mean in concrete terms? We here in Europe will compensate for the missing quantities by buying in from all over the world. Prices for many foodstuffs will continue to rise here. These purchased quantities will additionally be lacking in structurally weak regions of the world.
This will massively worsen the food situation in countries that do not have much purchasing power. The Ghana Chamber of Agriculture, for example, is warning of a massive price increase from the first quarter of 2022, with prices for cereals and grains rising by 30 to 45 percent, and even more in urban areas.
By that time at the latest, the concept of the United Nations World Food Program, for example, of generating food donations from the purchase of regional stocks will also no longer work. There will simply be too little food available.
We must urgently and seriously begin to process food surpluses in such a way that they can be used for a maximum length of time, unrefrigerated, for hungry people worldwide. Because hunger is murder.
We have the technology to preserve fresh, still edible food on a large scale and with little effort. There is sufficient capacity worldwide to transport,/ distribute this food in a climate-friendly way on the basis of empty runs. We have the possibility, the knowledge and the appropriate infrastructure to implement a simple preservation of food everywhere in the world so that people can help themselves. This new kind of help can well support and complement existing structures such as the World Food Program of the United Nations.
If we take biblical values as a guide, shouldn’t it be natural for us to save people from hunger, from starvation?
Isn’t it shameful that this is possible from currently disposed waste alone? The amount of food destroyed worldwide is several times enough for this. Why are these starving people not worth our waste?
It is quite simple to generate food or fertilizer for food from currently disposed waste:
- Still edible food can be preserved by e.g. boiling down, fermenting etc. for a maximum of time and easily.
- From food that is no longer edible, slaughterhouse waste, garden waste, sugar beet molasses, etc., edible and high-quality proteins can be safely obtained by using the black soldier fly. These can be extracted here, preserved and consumed outside the EU or bred directly in crisis areas. Due to the specificity of the black soldier fly, (it eats only in the larval stage, in the adult stage it has no mouth parts, no digestive organs) it cannot transmit diseases.
- Phosphorus can be extracted from sewage sludge, for example. This can be used again as fertilizer.There are so many ways to save people from starvation from currently destroyed waste alone. Over the last four years, we have developed a suitable concept, the „humanitarian bioeconomy“.
We would like to strongly encourage all actors along the „food“ value chain to get involved in the fight against starvation.
We would be happy to work with you to plan your social engagement here. We can also work with you to implement pilot projects worldwide. Please do not hesitate to contact us.
